U Of H Cutting Back To Close Budget Gap

U Of H Cutting Back To Close Budget Gap

September 19, 1991|By KATHERINE FARRISH ; Courant Staff Writer

WEST HARTFORD — C Facing a $3.7 million budget shortfall caused by a sharp drop in enrollment, the University of Hartford has laid off 16 employees, reduced the hours of dozens of others and offered an early retirement program.

With 227 fewer full-time undergraduate students this fall, university administrators blamed their first budget shortfall in recent memory on New England's recession and the drop in the number of high school graduates nationally. Some other categories of students also are down, for a total decrease of 355 students.

Enrollment of full-time undergraduates had risen over the past two years -- to a record-size freshman class last fall -- but this fall's preliminary count of 4,150 drops back to 1989 levels.

"We regard the shortfall in enrollment as temporary ... The university has put in place an aggressive student recruitment campaign that we're confident will bear significant results by next year at this time," university administrators said in a statement Wednesday.

University employees were notified of the layoffs in talks with supervisors Monday, and President Humphrey Tonkin detailed the budget problem in a letter to faculty members Tuesday. The layoffs came from the non-faculty work force of 709 full-time employees and occurred at the level of middle management or above.

Some professors said their workload will be heavier when secretaries, laboratory technicians and other support employees leave.

"It will make it tougher to teach," said Charles Ross, an associate professor of English literature. "It is pretty worrying." In addition to the layoffs, 48 employees will work fewer hours, have opted for early retirement or have switched to a 10-month work year. These measures and the layoffs will save $2.5 million, said Terry Bowmaster, vice president for finance. The rest of the budget gap will be made up by cutting non-salary portions of the annual $100 million budget and by not hiring part-time faculty this fall, he said.

The university's $30 million endowment will not be tapped, but

$1.9 million of a rainy day fund will be spent on pensions, severance pay and counseling for laid-off employees, officials said.

Demographers have predicted that the pool of high school graduates, which peaked in the late 1970s, will continue to drop nationally through about 1994 and rise slowly thereafter. In the meantime, many colleges, particularly the more expensive private universities that depend heavily on tuition, have faced tough competition for students and have suffered enrollment declines. University of Hartford students are paying about $19,000 this fall.

Preliminary enrollments at Connecticut universities vary this fall. Wesleyan University in Middletown, which suffered a $2 million budget shortfall last year, was on target with its enrollment of 667 students. When more students than expected required financial aid this fall, the university spent $750,000 more than it had planned for, spokesman Bobby Wayne Clark said. The shortfall will be made up by a 20 percent cut in student services over the next five years, but no layoffs are planned, he said.

Trinity College in Hartford, which has not suffered budget shortfalls in recent years, saw its freshmen class rise from 427 a year ago to 483 this fall. Enrollment also climbed at some smaller private colleges, including Quinnipiac College in Hamden and Teikyo Post University in Waterbury, which suffered declines in recent years.

At the University of Hartford, some faculty members believed the administration should have been better prepared for the drop in enrollment. Buoyed by last fall's record freshmen class, the university added administrators with the hope that the full-time undergraduate enrollment would rise to 5,000, Ross said. "The plain fact is that the administration is swollen," Ross said. "My worry is that the cuts are not deep enough." Paul Bugl, an associate professor of mathematics, said his department is losing to early retirement a technician who had prepared the physics laboratory for experiments, did the bookkeeping and made sure that equipment was repaired. That work will now fall on the professors in the department, he said.

"There is no question this will add to the workload," he said.

A student leader predicted that most students would not be affected by the cutbacks.

"They kept the students foremost in mind and made sure the cuts weren't in the academic area," said Kelly McCarten, president of the student association.